Digital demands increase for CMOs

As the world starts to see the impacts of big data (though to a lesser extent here in Australia), mobile and social interaction, SEO/SEM, and the ways in which companies engage and excite their customers are changing. To say that marketing is now data-driven would be the understatement of the year.

Increased demand

At Michael Page, we’ve noted the increase of non-negotiable digital skills on marketing job briefs over the past three years. More than 40% of marketing roles now require digital knowledge. Why? Simply, because the customers companies are trying to reach all interact in a social and digitally driven environment. If you want to talk to them you need to speak digitally.

It makes sense then, that marketing professionals need to adapt their skill sets to become more data-driven and data-savvy in order to add value in the new digital landscape.

Restructure your team

So what does that mean for the person at the top? Quite simply, Chief Marketing Officers need to start reorganising their marketing teams to account for this new breed of digitally-savvy experts. Org charts will change, with teams adding people whose title will consist purely of acronyms (UX, SEO, PPC, SEM) and will likely be suffixed with “analyst, forecaster or platform manager” – roles that previously may have only ever been seen under a Chief Information Officer.

As the role of technology in marketing grows, it’s crucial that marketing department staffing evolves to support it. To do this, CMOs will need to think outside the box when making hiring decisions. It will be a case of not looking for skills that were previously required, and not recruiting what used to work.

Maximise your investments

CMOs have once again become responsible for huge investment budgets - not just for managing campaigns, but also for investing in the technology to drive these campaigns. Gartner predicts that by 2017, CMO technology budgets will actually surpass those of the CIO technology budgets. Having the right people on board to manage and maximise those technology investments will be critical, according to the research.

Embrace the opportunity

These are exciting times for CMOs, as we look towards ever-shifting and ever-stimulating horizons. Moving away from the traditional landscape of marketing as quickly as possible will differentiate and separate the CMO of the future from the CMO of the most-definite past. How quickly digital media is embraced, and how quickly a business executes this, will determine the future of the marketing team. As it evolves and metamorphoses into something new, the CMO role will as well, and inevitably more than any of us would have ever thought.